Monday, April 09, 2007

Unplugged and Loving It

“I want young people to see not only what I did with my life, but what they can do with their lives.”~Bill Clinton

First my good news: I opened up my email inbox Easter Sunday to find a contract offer from The Wild Rose Press to publish Lost in Paradise in their Champagne Rose line! Very, very exciting news, especially since this was the novel I pulled from Virtual Tales a few months ago because I wanted to find a different home for it. It’s always nice when you take a gamble and it pays off.

TWRP publishes everything longer than 55K words in print, so this one should be available from Amazon sometime in 2008, I’m guessing. Stay tuned for the details!

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Well, as those of you who visit my blog regularly know, I was away for a few days last week. I was away in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to be specific, for a Spring Break getaway with hubby.

Why Hot Springs? Well, I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to bathe in 100-degree mineral water, en route to a steam bath and killer massage, in the tradition of men and women from centuries past. And hubby wasn’t about to let the chance to go diamond mining pass us by. After all, if it’s featured on the Travel Channel, it must be an adventure worth pursuing, right? And the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock is an impressive collection, well worth seeing if you're ever down that way.

I have pictures that I'll post, hopefully tomorrow, because today Blogger doesn't seem to be cooperating.

Overall, it was an enjoyable trip. But here’s the interesting thing: I didn’t check email or voicemail the entire time. Nope, not once. First of all, I didn’t have any Internet access. There was one cafe in downtown Hot Springs where you could buy time online for $.10/minute, but I decided to spend my money on a latte instead. So for 4 days, I didn’t read blogs. I didn’t check my inbox. I didn’t follow the Samhain Yahoo group discussions. And I forgot the charger to my cell phone, so the battery died the first day and I couldn’t have checked my telephone messages anyway.

The first 24 hours were a little weird, I’ll be honest. I’m online just about every day. So to go 4 days without any electronic contact felt a little strange, at first. But by the last day? I didn’t miss it. In fact, I was home for almost 24 hours before I turned on the computer at all. And it made me wonder just how dependent we are on our electronic connections, after all.

[The best unintended effect of my unplugged 4 days? I got an idea for a brand new 24-hour novel. Love the concept. Love the characters. Love the complexities that kept popping into my head as the day went on. Only thing I did not love? Trying to scribble down the idea on my 2x3” notepad while a flight attendant spilled ginger ale on my lap.]

So anyway, how plugged in are you? C’mon, be honest. How much time do you spend on the computer each day or week? And how long would you be able to go without?

Congratulation on the The Wild Rose Press publishing Lost in Paradise. What an accomplishment!!

As far as addicted to the computer and Internet, I hate to admit how addicted. I check my email countless times a day, like I am really expecting something earth shattering, but you never know. Whenever I have any type of question, I just do a search to get an answer. So addicted, YES I am!!!

The longest time I have been away from the computer is a weekend when we went to an outdoor festival and camped. No WiFi up in the Berkshire Mountains.